‘Doctor Who: Joy to the World review:’ What a star

Disruptors follow “Joy to the World”.

If there’s one thing Steven Moffatt loves to do it Doctor Whoand find a beast buried in the earth. He has made statues, shadows, lost children and the idea of ​​silence into some of the show’s most terrifying scenes. Sadly, the weird extra door you often find in old hotel rooms isn’t a concern at all, but it’s still a rich seam for him. That’s the inspiration for “Joy to the World,” Doctor Who‘s 2024 Christmas Special. What’s light, fun and a little bit scattered, just like Christmas should be, right?

When Doctor Who when he returned, the show was once again woven into the UK cultural landscape in a way it had never been before. One of those things is adding the show to the BBC One Christmas Day schedule, making it an international cultural gem. Most of the time after 2005, it aired an episode around The Great Dance and EastEnders of celebration. Imagine the British equivalent of all the events gathered around on TV like the Super Bowl or the Macy’s Day Parade, but on Christmas Day. Even if you don’t like every price offered, you are expected to have a family and eat.

With these specials, the popularity of the season, the long run and the big budget are as overwhelming as they are rewarding. The show must be playing to a bigger crowd than usual, with fans sitting around and elderly relatives filling the silence with gossip about their neighbour’s garden work. Therefore, the story should be a little relaxed, not requiring the audience to be interested in what is happening. And it’s set to be a fun holiday destination with BBC One’s Christmas Day programme.

Normally, a special celebration would be the sole domain of an actor but Russell T. Davies gave the lead to Steven Moffatt. Moffatt replaced Davies as the show’s prime time co-creator Sherlock and is considered the best writer of the 21st century. I have a good reputation like that, and I have already written “Bomb“For Ncuti Gatwa’s first season in the title race, expectations are high.

Moffatt is a great writer and knows his design well, so it’s no surprise that we open it. in media res. The Doctor is providing room service to various people at different times including Edmund Hilary’s camp on Everest and the Orient Express before crashing on Joy in a London pain room in 2024. After the credits, we’re back to the Doctor. to the Time Hotel, which allows guests to take a vacation through history. Don’t worry about causality or anything The sound of Thunder ironically, the Hotel was built in such a way as to protect its guests from wasting time.

The doctor wants to steal the milk for his coffee from the hotel room, but his eyes are caught by something sinister: A man carrying a bag with a chain link is trying to look into the room. The Doctor enlists Trev, one of his colleagues, to keep an eye out while he looks ahead to find out what might happen. As it turns out, the story makes sense and evil, jumping from crowd to crowd, and taking each one in turn. When it jumps to another receiver, the latter breaks.

This is when the Doctor meets Joy who, ironically, is chained to the case instead of the hotel manager. When the Doctor opens the case to try to find the answer, the case threatens to kill anyone contacted unless they find four numbers. Who can give us the code? The Doctor, emerging from his future, takes Joy with him as he leaves “our” Doctor stranded in 2024 without the TARDIS. As the hotel door closes, the Doctor tells himself about his future, why he lives alone and people always leave him. They are very upset because they don’t usually walk the “long way,” day in and day out.

Therefore, the episode stops to give us an extended series of the Doctor making friends with Anita, the hotel manager. The doctor gets a job looking after the hotel, and slowly lets himself in, hanging out with Anita until they become a platonic couple. It’s a series you’ve never seen before, and it’s a snapshot of the life of the Doctor and Anita. They make the microwave bigger inside, repaint Anita’s TARDIS car blue and sit and talk to each other on the seats – an important image due to the lack of seats on the TARDIS. But as the year ends and it’s time for the Doctor to return to his own show, he bids farewell to Anita.

Back at the time hotel, the Doctor replays what happened a year ago, sharing the codes and whisking Joy away to a new dimension. The doctor calculates that the bag contains the shape of an artificial star that can provide a source of energy to anyone who owns it. But unless you have the Hand of Omega, stars take a long time to grow, much longer than anyone can wait and try their best. Unless, if you steal a time hotel and send it to the dinosaur era, waiting for when the history of mankind will start to see if it works.

Joy, still holding the case, goes to the hotel’s dinosaur room as the Doctor tries to knock her out. In order to do that, they evoke strong emotions to destroy the relationship between the crime and its owner before they can be destroyed. He harasses her, forcing her to reveal why she is staying at a cheap hotel in London. It seems that he is grieving the death of his mother who died of COVID-19 in a private room and Joy was unable to say goodbye to her in person. Tragically, before the Doctor can stop the star seed, it is eaten by a dinosaur (a good looking one), putting it away from him.

The Doctor and Joy return to the hotel and, after 65 million years, find that the star is ready to explode. Trapped inside a stone building with a heavy stone door that cannot move, time is running out. So the Doctor, who prides himself on being “good with a rope,” steals a rope from Everest base camp, and hangs it on the back of the Orient Express to retrieve the stone. Terrible CGI when Gatwa is standing on the train. An example Doctor Who: Now it can make convincing dinosaurs, but now it can’t make a guaranteed ship.

That’s where things start to come together, as Joy’s eyes are flashing with her powers, but when the Doctor returns, Joy has… eaten a star? Did you take it the other way? Did you make friends with them? He found her standing on the edge of a rock, where Joy says she will merge with the star and take it to heaven, where it will not harm anyone. At this point in my notes, I wrote, “Don’t let this be Bethlehem,” as the camera pans out to show where they are, with three camels parked outside the barn. No.

Joy is reunited with her mother and the doctor is back on the road, but he doesn’t get Anita a job managing the Time Hotel. We also get a few shots of Ruby Sunday, who will be returning to the show for its second proper season.

As I said above, you can’t judge “Joy to the World” on the merits of the regular episode because it serves multiple masters. But I don’t think we can call it the strongest part of Steven Moffatt’s oeuvre or the Christmas special. Like all Disney timepieces, it has a slightly uneven quality where the flow gets messed up and zips in all the wrong places. I’m all for the time when we see a “normal” year in the Doctor’s life, but the story set up needs to be strong enough not to be delayed. It’s a fun way to pass an hour with a belly full of holiday (or your favorite equivalent) with enough mawkishness to make you think you’ve seen something serious. But I don’t think I’ll be coming back to watch this over and over again like I would, “The Christmas Attack.”